Leopard Guts

Also notice how tiny the motherboard is, given the monster size of this notebook. Two sinks cover the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire configuration, while the empty spot beside the CPU sink supports a lid-mounted cooling fan.

GeForce GTX 480M buyers will find the second card bay covered a second fan and heat sink. The GTX 480M’s lofty power consumption requires two sinks and two fans to cool a single GPU. A GF104-based mobile GPU could help Nvidia’s reduce heat while increasing performance beyond that of an underclocked GTX 465.

While not necessarily intended for games, a large battery will help to keep the system alive for ordinary on-the-go tasks such as checking email. The Leopard uses a monster 68.82 Wh unit.

An enormous 220 W power brick is enough to support two Mobility Radeon HD 5870 graphics modules and a high-end processor at simultaneous full-load.

So what does this prove? That power draw isn't as irrelevant as Nvidia's fanbois claim. It also proves that Nvidia needs to do the same thing with their notebook GPU's they did for their desktop ones: lower prices immensely.

I'm curious to see what would happen when Nvidia releases a mobile version of the 460. That wouldn't be on par with dual 5870 mobilities, but could be a very compelling upper mid end offering.

david__tHow is it possible that crossfire works so well versus a single card in the mobile sector, and yet in PCs, full size cards barely give you a 20 - 30% boost with crossfire turned on?

The latest generation gives you far more than 20-30% performance advantage. ATI's Evergreen architecture sits close to 70% while Nvidia even manages to squeeze a 90% boost out of a second card (high end Fermi's are a failure, but they sure did the SLI scaling right). You're a generation or two behind it seems...

SilmarunyaSo what does this prove? That power draw isn't as irrelevant as Nvidia's fanbois claim. It also proves that Nvidia needs to do the same thing with their notebook GPU's they did for their desktop ones: lower prices immensely.I'm curious to see what would happen when Nvidia releases a mobile version of the 460. That wouldn't be on par with dual 5870 mobilities, but could be a very compelling upper mid end offering.

The GTX 460m was released ages ago. Indeed it's a little bit weaker than the mobile 5870. But an dual setup SLI will probably beat a dual crossfire. Though I haven't seen any GTX 460m SLI setups yet.